OT- Cell Phone Carriers

[daycarediva]

Who do you have? Do you like the service? Coverage?

Our plan with Verizon is up and we are VERY unhappy with their service. We just paid a $550 bill (reg bill is 212) for supposed data overages when we have cell data and assist turned off! They said my business cell (I have NOTHING on it that would use data and I have it connected to Wifi) used 11g's! WTH! Anyway, now after calling and everything and completely NOT using dh's business cell for weeks, our bill is $460 for March (our last month on a plan there!)

[Blackcat31]

Who do you have? Do you like the service? Coverage?

Our plan with Verizon is up and we are VERY unhappy with their service. We just paid a $550 bill (reg bill is 212) for supposed data overages when we have cell data and assist turned off! They said my business cell (I have NOTHING on it that would use data and I have it connected to Wifi) used 11g's! WTH! Anyway, now after calling and everything and completely NOT using dh's business cell for weeks, our bill is $460 for March (our last month on a plan there!)

Holy buckets!

I've been with Verizon for years now and never had issues with them.

My DH and I both have smart phones and with our current plan (MORE EVERYTHING TLK&TXT 500MB) our bill is roughly $116 per month.

I use my cellular data everyone in a while but mostly I just use wi-fi. I've never had data charges over what I have on my plan (I think we have that part turned off).

Looking at my current bill...I used 254.417 MB and DH used 76.927 MB of data last month so maybe we're just not big data users....I don't know but a $400 cell phone bill would seriously freak me out!

[Pepperth]

DH and I switched from Verizon to Straight Talk. We pay $46.60 for each phone and have data/ texting/etc. When we had Verizon I was paying $162.00, but was grandfathered in with unlimited data. That was hard to give up, but we really like the pay as you go plan we have now.

[LovingLife]

We use Page Plus. It runs off of Verizon towers. I'm pretty sure you can now run 4G (we both have Iphone 4S, 3G phones). We've had great service, hubby pays $10/month (250/250) and I pay $30 (at least 1000 minutes and 1000 texts and some data). We both use Wifi around the house, but I honestly don't use my phone for much, other than texting as my parents prefer that style of communication. I honestly need someone to show me what everyone does on their phones all the time, b/c I have no clue. I'm 34, so I should know these things, ha!

[Leigh]

We also switched from Verizon to Straight Talk a few years ago. If you get a CDMA phone, you still use Verizon's towers, basically still have Verizon service, for a MUCH lower price. I was scared to make the switch, but I am so glad that I did. We now pay just under $100 for 2 smart phone plans.

[Second Home]

We witched from verizon to cricket . They use at&t towers . We drove from MD to R.I. and never lost service once . We have had them for a year and hove no problems what so ever .

They have ( did when we signed up ) a plan where you pay less for each phone line per month . $40 for the first , $30 for the second , $20 for the third , $10 for the fourth and $0 for the fifth line . We pay $100 per month for 5 phones , unlimited data and not shared .

We did buy all new phones but they even had some good rebates on phones .

[MunchkinWrangler]

I use Tmobile, I pay for my phone monthly(I didn't pay for my phone outright)I have a family plan, but I have unlimited talk, text, and data, but I use Wifi most of the time. I only pay about $160/month. Their customer service lacks sometimes but for the most part, I haven't had issues on my end, and when I did a few years ago, the charges were cleared, no questions asked.

[Thriftylady]

I am on sprint. We got in on a good deal and are still on the Framily plan. You can't get it now, which bites. With six people on it (only three in our household but we get separate bills and have separate accounts ) we pay 150 a month. DH has unlimited data, I could add it to the other two lines for $10 each but DD and I don't use that much. My one complaint is that in the semi, hubby seems to drop way to many calls in certain areas. But I think he just hits dead zones driving as much as he does.

[wonderfullisa]

https://www.Ting.com

We switched to them 3-4 years ago, when they were brand new. We pay under $40, total, for 2 smartphones. With wifi, I almost never use any data.
I added my parents, and the total for the 4 phones is usually $54.xx. If my mom is chatty, around $70. For all four phones.
They have a good referral program, as well.

[Annalee]

Who do you have? Do you like the service? Coverage?

Our plan with Verizon is up and we are VERY unhappy with their service. We just paid a $550 bill (reg bill is 212) for supposed data overages when we have cell data and assist turned off! They said my business cell (I have NOTHING on it that would use data and I have it connected to Wifi) used 11g's! WTH! Anyway, now after calling and everything and completely NOT using dh's business cell for weeks, our bill is $460 for March (our last month on a plan there!)

Same happened with me with Verizon...so bad I paid out my contract and moved to AT&T. Have been happy with AT&T many years! Good luck!

[Play Care]

I use Cricket wireless. $35 a month because I use the auto pay option. I had to buy the phone, which was pricey cause I wanted an iPhone. But I've been pleased.

ETA: my data plan is the lowest they have, but since I'm home on wi-fi it didn't bother me.

[LysesKids]

I'm with AT&T and have the go phone 45 month plan (prepaid) same thing as Straight talk but I don't lose service traveling to other states as I did when I actually used straight talk. Going up the 81 corridor the phone literally loses services at the WV VA line & in parts of MD; they told me I had to get another number for that area, ummm NOOOO.

Thru AT&T I was able to keep my same number when I switched phones (I buy mine outright) and I have 4 G. My smartphone is how I take credit cards for payments & I never use all my data because I pick up WiFi everywhere

[MaryF]

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/best-cheap-cell-phone-plans/

Unfortunately I don't have personal experience with anything besides Verizon, but this article really helps explain different options.

[Hunni Bee]

I had Verizon ever since when they were still Alltel. I always paid a little bit more than most other people, but I figured I was getting better service.

Fast forward to two years ago when I moved to my current address. Verizon's excuse for charging so much is that you have service almost anywhere - sike. I do live in a semi-rural area...but the median income is quite high and one of the biggest retail districts in the state is five minutes away. I had NO service - I never got calls, I couldn't make calls, texts took hours to send and forget about web. To top it all off, I always went over my data. I was paying $93 plus overages for 2 gigs of absolute crap data and 450 minutes. Plus when my phone was stolen, their only option to me was to purchase a $200 refurbished flip phone that was incompatible with my plan .

I now have Metro PCS. Much better service, more data and only $40 per month plus my phone was free.

[snbauser]

I use Tmobile, I pay for my phone monthly(I didn't pay for my phone outright)I have a family plan, but I have unlimited talk, text, and data, but I use Wifi most of the time. I only pay about $160/month. Their customer service lacks sometimes but for the most part, I haven't had issues on my end, and when I did a few years ago, the charges were cleared, no questions asked.

This is us. We had At&T up until about a year ago. I got tired of constantly monitoring my kids data usage. The final straw was my son using his phone in the car to listen to music. He got tired of the music stopping and getting a pop up every time we passed a wifi spot. So he turned his wifi off since he wasn't using it or data. Then he forgot to turn the wifi back on when we got home and was watching video's on it. By the time we started getting the notifications about going over our data and he turned it back on, we racked up a $350 phone bill. Now we have 4 phones and unlimited talk/text/data. We did get new/used phones and are paying for them but our bill is about $180/month. Once the phones are paid off our bill will be about $112/month. No more overages. No more nagging the kids about their data usage. Much more peace. And we drove from NC to Canada last summer and only had a few spots with no service.